Epiphany
by Elric-Chan
Summary: Light's coming to a realization about L, too fast, in his last moments. Alternate Ending to the anime; slightly LxLight


**Disclaimer: Death Note does not belong to me.**

**I wrote this for an "Alternative Ending" contest for an LxLight club on deviantART. **

**_Note: An epiphany is a sudden, life-changing realization that can drive a person mad._**

**Enjoy and review.**

**xXx**

_"Ngghnn... dammit, why?"_

Breathing heavily and bleeding profusely from the several wounds that peppered his body, Light struggled down the street. His eyes were having trouble adjusting to the bright sunset, but that was the least of his worries and he knew it.

_"This doesn't make any sense..."_ Light's thought were frantic and confused as he tottered down the street at a precariously choppy pace. _Why is this happening to me...?"_

Everything was going wrong. It wasn't how he'd planned it at all.

_**EPIPHANY**_

What could he do? He'd finally revealed himself as Kira; although, in that moment, it had all seemed like the right thing to do. When had it - _how_ had it backfired like this? And now, everyone who had fallen for him, everyone he thought he'd no longer need, they were truly gone... when he needed them more than ever.

He stopped, gasping for air, and clutched at his chest in fear that his entire body would collapse in on itself at any moment. Pain was still coursing throughout his veins with each fragile beat of his heart. He wasn't going to see tomorrow, and he was terrified.

"I'm... I'm really going to die..." he said out loud to himself, sinking to his knees in soft grass. "This is... really it..."

He took a moment to look around, his gaze unfocused and his vision slipping. He was in a park, much like the one where he'd first found the Death Note.

_"Nhn..."_ he thought weakly, toppling over on the grass, his face dropping comfortably onto the tickling blades. _"I really screwed up... with this whole Kira business..."_

His eyes idly followed an ant as it marched across the grass, now illuminated a dull orange from the slowly setting sun. He couldn't just lie here and wait for death, that much he knew; especially with the pain threatening to overwhelm him.

And in that moment of balancing on the edge of life and death, a voice came to him, inexplicably - L's voice.

_You know there's a 98.7 chance you'll die if you just lay there, Light-kun._

"Shut up, Ryuuzaki..." Light had mumbled before he realized what he was saying. "...Ryuuzaki?"

Everything fell silent as his focused returned to the world around him, and in that frozen fragment of time, something gripped at his heart; something not unlike what he had always assumed to be the last pain felt by his victims. It wasn't a heart attack, just a mere realization.

_"I loved him..."_

And that realization was going to drive him mad.

In an instant, he was on his feet, his broken body screaming in protest, and his voice rising out in a scream of its own; birds left their perches in the trees with affronted shrieks and he was shocked at himself. He didn't stop to think about how anyone who might hear him would react, but who was around to hear him? Who _would_ hear him, in this secluded park?

Only when Light's vocal cords began to give out did his screaming stop, reducing him to a rasping, sobbing wreck of a human being. He was on his knees on the ground, his face buried in his bloodied hands.

"What did I do...?" he croaked, his voice near-to-inaudible. "He was... and I killed..."

He swallowed hard. "I... I _can't_ have loved him..."

_Why?_

"Because... it was Ryuuzaki..." He suddenly laughed, the sound soft and quiet. "Here I am talking to myself... I must be losing my mind."

_Maybe you are, Light-kun._

"No!" Light was staggering to his feet once again, furious. "This isn't how it is!"

But it was there, that yearning for L to be alive, that heat that seemed to consume his heart and eat away at his very soul... he loved L. But there was still the inexorable terror inside him; fear of what what lay ahead for him, and the horror of knowing he was the reason that L was gone. It was more than his already unstable mind could handle.

_Plink._

He turned fiercely, his eyes alight like a madman; and then they were glowing red again, widening with each passing second, because there it was, lying resolutely on the ground - the Death Note.

His raised his eyes to the darkening sky as a rush of blue swept overhead.

"Ryuk..." His lips moved in what was barely more than a scant whisper. "Goodbye..."

And so this was how it would be. He had to do it himself, or bleed to death. Was this Ryuk's way of telling him that? And then Light remembered - hadn't Ryuk said that he would be the one writing Light's name down when it came time for him to die? Light shook his head. He wasn't about to put any more faith into that shinigami.

Slowly and carefully he knelt beside the notebook, picking it up, relishing the familiar feel of it against his fingertips. He sighed. This time, it seemed, he'd be writing his own name down.

Numbly, he raised the pen to the paper, as he had done so many times before; so why did it feel so different now?

_You're doing the right thing..._

He paused with the tip of the pen resting on the paper. How should he do it? There was that part of him that reasoned that it would be only fitting for Kira to go out with a bang, but for all the killing and evildoing Light had done, he was a weak boy at heart. He wanted something painless, something quick, as ashamed as it made him to admit to even himself. Even though his victims had been graced with nothing less than pain, he wanted peace.

And as it seemed his realization about L was tearing his heart into pieces and draining his sanity, he saw not a more fitting way to finally end it all.

As he felt his breathing begin to slow, he moved the pen across the paper.

_Light Yagami - Epiphany_

His lips turned up into a smile as he dropped the pen, and the Death Note beside it. Did it even make sense? He didn't know. Maybe he would go mad, maybe that's what he wanted, maybe... he couldn't tell anymore. This was the only thing that felt real to him now; and he collapsed beside the notebook. He could already feel L's arms wrapping around him as he closed his eyes.

_"I'm coming, Ryuuzaki..."_

_**OWARI**_

**xXx**

**A/N: Angsty fic is angsty. **


End file.
